


A Whale Of A Tale

by SallyExactly



Series: Scar Tissue [3]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff, Found Families, Hugs all around, Multi, then what happened?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2020-03-26 14:34:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SallyExactly/pseuds/SallyExactly
Summary: A collection of short pieces dealing with the post-war lives of the team.New: Ch. 2, San Diego, Lucy/Flynn, January 2021





	1. Spaceland, April 2018, JR

**Author's Note:**

> This series will always be organized chronologically, by when each chapter is set, rather than by order of posting. Each new chapter will be inserted in the appropriate place. Check the story summary to see which chapter is new.

"I still can't believe Wyatt thought Stasia gave us Klingon marital aids," Rufus said, as they wandered hand-in-hand.

"You know," Jiya said, "how would Klingons even tell BDSM from regular sex?"

"I don't know, you're the Star Trek expert."

"Let's ask Wyatt."

Rufus snorted as Jiya dropped his hand long enough to take out her phone and text Wyatt. They'd barely gone ten feet when her phone made the transporter noise.

_i don't know i don't want to know i'm not answering any more texts about klingons_ , Wyatt replied.

She smirked, and wrote back:  _That's fine. Next time I'll just call_ .

She and Rufus stood to one side to let a big group of excited kids, and their harried adult chaperones, through. As long as they were, you know, paused anyway, she kissed the corner of Rufus's mouth. He grinned down at her, and kissed the tip of her nose.

"Moon walk first?" she asked.

"I think the kids headed in that direction."

"Rocket ship ride?"

"The kids from ten minutes ago were heading in  _that_ direction."

"There weren't that many of them. They might be almost through." She squeezed his hand.

They were not almost through. "... not my best hypothesis."

They leaned against a scale model of the Saturn V, safely out of the way of the two different games of tag going among the kids waiting in line. At least the kids were having fun, and they weren't hurting anything. She covered a yawn.

Rufus seemed to have similar thoughts. "At least they're here and learning about science, right?"

"Mmm."

"And maybe they'll grow up to not believe science is all a liberal conspiracy. And, you know, be an informed electorate and all that shit."

"Mmm. I think that's a lot to expect from a theme park."

He sighed. "Probably."

This time he reached for her hand. His fingers were warm against hers, and she characterized each callus as it brushed her palm. That one was from his free weights; that one was from long hours with the soldering iron.

"Still not tired of not living in an underground bunker," he commented.

That had been nearly a year ago by the calendar for her, and four years by actual lived time. The bunker had, honestly, faded in her memory. But just his words were enough to bring back the cold, the echo, the dark, the mildew.

She looked up at the sunshine, and felt the warm breeze brush her hair, and slid closer to him. "Still not tired of no one trying to kill us." So far.

They waited a while for the line to go down, then climbed into a delightful cheesy rocket ship car. The car accelerated fast, the walls painted to make it look like they were pointing straight up into the air. It was basically a glorified roller coaster. Jiya grabbed Rufus's hand anyway.

Her hair came loose on the second drop, and she started to laugh. Because after everything, after...  _everything_ , here she was, on a rocket ship roller coaster with her husband in the southern California sunshine in 2018.

Rufus squeezed her hand back.

"Want to go again?" she asked, when they climbed out.

"No." Rufus looked a little green.

So they went to the moon landing exhibit instead. Rufus's eyes went wide when they stepped into a replica of the mission control room. Jiya was impressed; it looked good. The code on the monitors even made sense. But she wasn't the one who'd been there.

"Did they get it right?" she asked.

He took his time wandering around the room before he answered. "Yeah," he managed finally. "Yeah, they... did." The room was full of holographic projections of the people who would've actually been there at the time, and he stopped in front of Katherine Johnson and Gene Kranz shaking hands. His eyes were shining.

Jiya smiled, and wandered through the room herself. It was a little weird stepping through the holograms, but worth it to get close to each of the monitors and see what each man— it  _was_ all men, except for Katherine— would have been looking at.

A plaque on the wall caught her attention: a memorial for Wayne Ellis, found shot to death in his house the day of the landing. She winced. She knew the constraints Flynn had been operating under, or thought he had. She knew if he'd tried to offer the team a truce in those early days, Wyatt probably would have killed him.

But still. They were the ones who'd gotten to come home.

"Holy  _shit!_ "

Old habits died hard; she looked up fast. Rufus was standing in the doorway to the next room, but he was startled, not alarmed.

She stood next to him and saw that the far wall of the next room was a huge picture of the mission control room applauding Johnson. The room itself was totally dedicated to Johnson. Glass cases held stuff from her life, and placards everywhere explained how she'd come to save the moon landing, what happened afterwards, and her career as a Flight Director.

"It was not like this before," Rufus murmured, grinning as they looked around.

Jiya looked up, and pointed to a little tasteful sign near the ceiling: "Exhibit made possible by a grant from the Lamarr Foundation."

Rufus's eyes widened. She tucked her hand through his arm. "Look at you, you time-traveling superhero, you," she murmured.

"Damn these onion-chopping ninjas," Rufus whispered.

"Yeah, I can see how they follow you around." She freed her hand, reached behind his neck, and produced a small orange plastic ninja figurine.

He stared at her hand. "Wait, what?"

"I think there's another one." She put the the toy in his palm and pulled a purple one off his shoulder.

He started to laugh. "Oh my God. What—"

"What, you thought I worked in a 19 th century saloon for three years without learning any sleight of hand?" She handed him the purple one, too.

He stared at it, then tilted his head in a shrug and put them both in his pocket. Then he kissed her hair.

They went slowly through the three remaining rooms in the moon landing exhibit. When they were done, the line for the moon walk was still long, so they headed to the old-fashioned arcade, an incredible collection of space-themed video games. She got the higher score between the two of them in Space Invaders, but he made it onto the top ten for Asteroids.

After leaving the arcade, they sat on a bench in the sun and split a cup of space dots. They were both a little too lactose intolerant to finish an entire cup on their own, so this worked.

"So, hear me out," Rufus began. "What if what's super vanilla to us is horribly kinky to Klingons?"

"Like, it's taboo to be soft and gentle?"

He nodded.

Jiya considered. "I can see that."

"Like..." Rufus put on a terrible Klingon voice. "'Today is a good day to cuddle for hours and tell  _absolutely no one_ .'"

Jiya snorted.

They kept eating. When Rufus turned to see where the "three... two... one... LIFTOFF!" voice was coming from, Jiya snuck a green ninja onto his spoon.

He saw it and burst out laughing. Then he put the cup down on the bench, leaned forward, and kissed her.

She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He cupped the back of her head, fingers gentle against her hair. She sighed softly against his mouth, and tilted her head to an even better angle. She was so glad they didn't time travel any more, but at the same time, she found herself wishing she could  _stop_ time, and just have this moment for a few hours. Because she knew as certainly as she knew anything that however long they were going to have together, which hopefully would be at least fifty more years... it wouldn't be enough. It  _couldn't_ be enough.

But they still had it.

Finally, they reluctantly separated. Jiya was well aware she had a dopey smile on her face. She didn't give a damn.

Rufus suddenly sat upright, and started patting himself down. "How many ninjas did you stick on me that time?"

A passing woman gave him a strange look. Jiya started laughing hysterically: the answer was  _none_ . This was the gift that just kept on giving.

"God, I love you," he told her softly when she'd calmed down.

She leaned forward and gently kissed his top lip. "I know, Princess."

He kissed her nose, and smiled down at her, soft and sweet.

They finished their half-melted space dots and got in line for the moon walk. Jiya spent the first third of the walk being very impressed by the realism, the middle third racing Rufus as both of them sprung high in the atmosphere with each step, and the last third thinking what she could've improved herself. After that, Rufus got them a late lunch from the old-fashioned cafeteria, hamburger for him, veggie burger for her.

They took their time with more exhibits and rides. As they left the Sally Ride memorial, Rufus nudged her, and pointed to the selfie station up ahead. "You wanna?"

Jiya grinned at him. "Let's. We can send the pictures to Stasia."

It got better: the selfie station, which was built like a photo booth, had a basket of props and a big screen with selectable backdrops. Rufus tugged on some wobbly, sparkly alien antennae. "How do I look?"

She snickered. "Out of this world."

They took a picture with the antennae against a generic desert planet backdrop. Then with ray guns. Then they pulled up a swamp creature backdrop, Jiya put on a harness with purple tentacles of a vaguely unearthly shade, and Rufus threatened her with a lightsaber. Then Rufus put on the tentacles, which clashed with the green antennae, and Jiya grabbed a ray gun. Then he tickled her with one of the tentacles, she threw a ninja at his face, and their photo session devolved into a fake ray gun vs. lightsaber battle.

"Hey, look," Rufus said, when they'd put the props down and managed to stop giggling. "Yoda ears!"

Finally they realized someone else was waiting, and took their last picture. Rufus flipped through the fifty or so photos on his phone as they walked. "I think this one belongs on our wall."

She looked: it was the one where he'd arranged two headbands so one side of his head was Yoda ears and the other was Vulcan ears. She had the antennae and the purple tentacles, which she'd draped around his shoulders in a hug. He had a panicked look on his face, and was just about to drop the lightsaber. "Definitely."

They got some cheese-and-veggie fries and sat in the rocket garden to split them as a bunch of kids played tag around the status. "Mmm." Rufus made a deeply appreciative noise around his fork. "I can feel my arteries clogging as we speak," he said when he'd chewed and swallowed.

Cheese fries had been so far down the list of things she'd missed about the twenty-first century, those three years in the past, that they hadn't actually  _made_ the list. But she still found herself appreciating them even more.

She found herself appreciating the whole day. This was just... this was just really nice. Jiya still wasn't sure what Klingon sex toys would actually be like, but considering Klingon culture as a whole, she was pretty sure they were enjoying this day a lot more than they would've any Klingon marital aid Stasia could've given them, especially since they were both pretty contentedly vanilla.

"We should send Wyatt the tentacle picture," she said after her next bite.

"Which one? We took like ten."

"The weirdest one."

He got his phone out and they started going through them, then looked up at the sound of small commotion. Jiya blinked at what looked like a small herd of aliens floating towards them, then realized it was a kid who'd won the logic game in the arcade. It took a lot of skill to win one of the big inflatable aliens. This kid had four.

"That is quite an achievement," her dad was saying. "But are you sure you need to keep  _all_ of them, cucurbita? I'm not sure how we're going to get them all home."

The little girl appeared to consider this.

"Look," the dad added, a little desperately. "Maybe these nice people would like one."

"Um," Jiya said, "we don't—"

The kid looked the two of them over, then thrust the alien at Rufus, who took it out of reflex.

"Um," Rufus said. "We could, uh, drop it off to you..."

The dad gave Rufus a death glare behind his daughter's back.

"Happy birthday!" the girl said cheerfully, and trotted off to the next set of occupied benches. Leaving Rufus holding a six-foot-high inflatable alien.

"Um," Jiya said again.

They looked at each other.

"We could leave it here," she suggested.

He shook his head. "I can think of things to do with a life size inflatable alien," he added, then saw the extreme skepticism on her face. "No, not  _that!_ "

Jiya snickered like a teenager, and it felt good. "Do we have to keep it at the apartment?"

"We can take it to work."

"We can give it to Connor."

"We can  _leave_ it for Connor when he's not there."

They exchanged evil little smiles.

"We should name it," Rufus added. "I vote Archibald."

Jiya quietly checked him for any signs of concussion. " _Archibald?_ "

"Yeah, you know, we can call him Archie or Baldie for short. It's versatile."

... so. Archibald.

Dragging an inflatable alien around Spaceland got tiresome pretty fast, but that was okay; they were both tired. Too many weeks of long nights at MaSun Industries. They visited the future of space travel exhibit, and then stopped back at the selfie station with Archie in tow. Then they headed for the car.

"I'll drive," she said, watching Rufus try to smother a yawn.

"Ooo oh ow ear," Rufus yawned. He closed his mouth with a snap. "Sorry. You drove down here."

"And I can drive back. You're asleep on your feet, Rufus."

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. "'kay."

They conscientiously belted Archie in the back seat, and then headed home. Jiya enjoyed the startled double takes she got from other drivers when they saw the passenger in the back. Rufus fell asleep five minutes into the ride and slumped against the door, whuffling softly. He stayed asleep even when Jiya pulled into the drive through of the local bowl place and got both their favorites.

She parked in front of their apartment building, turned off the Prius, and looked at him. She smiled. "Hey, Sleeping Beauty," she said softly.

He didn't respond. She opened her mouth to try again. "Pretty sure you're supposed to kiss me," he muttered.

She laughed, undid her seatbelt, and leaned forward. She got her arm around his shoulders so she could tug him closer, and softly kissed his forehead, his nose, and then his lips. His hands skimmed up her sides to wrap around her own shoulders.

Cardboard creaked against her knee. She pulled back when she realized she was crushing her salad. Rufus reached up and brushed a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. "I'll get dinner if you want to get Archie," she said.

He was made of considerably thicker plastic than a pool toy, and Jiya didn't know how fast he'd deflate. But she  _definitely_ didn't want to shuffle out here Monday morning, still half-asleep, and freak out at the sight of something grey-green and faintly luminescent slumped over in the back seat.

Upstairs, Jiya left Archie on the dining room table while Rufus grabbed forks, and they collapsed side-by-side on the couch, their feet on the coffee table. "That was a good idea," Rufus muttered after a few quiet minutes of chewing.

"Yeah. It was nice to actually take a break."

"I don't want to think about what's waiting for us Monday."

"So don't think about it. We told Connor we were taking the weekend."

"Mmm."

She slumped against his shoulder as she finished her salad. He rested his head against hers.

When they finished, he cleaned up while she sent Wyatt the picture of her and Rufus in the selfie booth, with Archie, wearing the tentacle harness, looking over their shoulders. He didn't reply right away. Maybe he was working, or, maybe he was just straight-up ignoring her.

"Rufus?" she called, after she yawned so widely her eyes watered.

"Yeah."

"I'm just going to bed."

"Good idea, I'll be in soon."

And maybe if they went to bed now, they'd both wake up later with a little more energy. Or maybe not. She was tired enough that the thought of ten hours of sleep was nearly as appealing as the prospect of sex with her husband.

By the time she'd showered and moisturized, and wrapped her robe around her— too tired to bother with pajamas— Rufus was already in bed, the top sheet on her side pulled down messily and invitingly. Jiya turned on the fan at the foot of the bed. They had air conditioning, but there was something about the gentle  _whirrrrr_ of the fan that they both liked, that seemed to help keep the nightmares away.

She climbed into bed, and snuggled back against him. He nuzzled her neck and made a soft noise of contentment.

"What do you want to do tomorrow?" she yawned.

"Nothing," he muttered. Then he amended that to, "Nothing, and figure out how to sneak Archie into Connor's office."

"'s a plan," she sighed, and closed her eyes.


	2. San Diego, January 2021, LF

Lucy had finally gotten the knack of breastfeeding. Alice didn’t have problems latching on any more, and she drank greedily as long as she wasn’t distracted. It still hurt sometimes, and Lucy didn’t like that, but she _did_ love the cuddling, the bonding, the quiet time. She absolutely adored it. And she had this nursing a baby thing down cold.

So, naturally, now she had two babies.

Elena had come to them on formula, of course— if she’d ever been breastfed, her mother’s death had forcibly weaned her. They’d kept her on that, thinking it would be one piece of continuity in a sea of upheaval. Juggling bottles and formula had lasted until Lucy, exhausted, had just put Elena to her breast. She’d nuzzled and explored, and then latched on just as Lucy had been about to give up. And that was that. And it was a good idea, and it was easier, but easier wasn’t the same as _easy_ and it meant Lucy was now _nursing two babies_.

“Garcia,” she called quietly. Could he hear her over the noise of preparing dinner?

She wasn’t sure what was worse: when they wanted to nurse at different times, or when they wanted to nurse at the _same_ time. She leaned carefully sideways, and, with two fingers of her left hand, tried to ease a pillow closer without letting go of Alice. It didn’t work very well, and Alice complained. Elena just kept sucking steadily. Lucy tried again, and Alice complained more sharply. Lucy didn’t want to risk letting her get distracted.

“Garcia,” she called again. Alice twitched warningly. Lucy’s arms were aching, and she was terrified of _dropping_ one of them. But she couldn’t reposition either of them while she held the other, and—

Where was her phone? Damn it, just out of reach.

This was untenable. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? She scooted awkwardly sideways until she could grab the damn thing. Texting when you were holding two babies wasn’t easy, but she’d gotten a lot of on-the-job training in juggling lately. And she only needed three letters: HLP.

… was that his phone buzzing across the room?

She looked around for something she could safely kick towards the wall. Then Garcia appeared in the doorway, knelt beside the couch, and grabbed Alice before she could slide butt-first onto the cushion.

 _“Thank_ you.” Lucy used both of her own hands to reposition Elena, and wedge a pillow under her. Garcia grabbed another pillow and supported Alice.

“This isn’t going so well,” she muttered. “I knew I should have tried the table.” Alice’s pillow chose that moment to sag against her hip, and Garcia had to grab Alice again.

Lucy suddenly felt near to tears at not even being able to nurse, unaided. How were they going to keep doing this?

“Can you scoot forward?”

She thought he was asking a lot, especially as he’d just let go of Alice. But she obligingly wiggled awkwardly across the cushions. He sat down behind her, and reached around to support Elena with one big hand. Then he reached up and brushed Lucy’s hair behind her ear, correctly guessing it was bothering her.

Lucy sighed, and relaxed back against him as both girls continued to suck happily. Oh, that was much better.

“I feel like a cafeteria milk dispenser,” she sighed after a few minutes.

“Is one of them getting chocolate?”

She was surprised into a snort of laughter.

“It’ll, uh, be easier when Alice can hold her head up, too,” he added. “Here.” He took out his phone.

“What’re you doing?” She tried to look, but her movements were kind of limited.

“They make pillows for this.” He pulled up a baby site on his phone.

“Are you saying you’re tired of being my nursing pillow?”

He kissed her temple. “Lucy, you can always use me as a pillow.”

He flicked through a selection of nursing pillows for multiples as she said yay or nay to each. Two minutes, and she’d picked one to have overnighted. She adjusted Alice, and settled back against Garcia again. He’d put his phone away; now he ran the fingers of his free hand gently through her hair. She felt herself relax.

She looked down at the girls. Alice Maria… and, in what she wasn’t sure whether to call coincidence or fate, Elena Maria.

“Garcia?” she whispered.

“Mmm.”

She hesitated. She didn’t want to say it to him, because she knew that the worst of what they were going through— there was literally no comparison, to the worst that _he_ had gone through. Last time.

But she was also exhausted, and didn’t see an end to that.

“This is… hard,” she admitted. “This is _so_ hard.”

“I know.”

“It feels like it’s never going to get better.”

“I know,” he said again. “It does. But I also know that it will.”

Elena finished. Garcia gently slid out from behind Lucy and picked Elena up to burp her. Lucy dozed off, as she was prone to doing these days, and woke maybe just a few minutes later to Alice sleeping against her chest while Garcia cradled Elena and murmured to her in Spanish. The only word Lucy caught was _querida_ , but she didn’t need to understand the language to know that the translation was, _she’s staying here_.

Which, hard or not, was just fine with Lucy.

She sat upright. “Dinner—”

“Ten more minutes in the oven.”

Lucy relaxed. The stress of these last few weeks had made habits from years ago rear their ugly heads again. But they were a team just as much in the running of their household as they had been on the missions.

Elena, _thank God_ , usually slept through the night, but Alice, younger and smaller, still needed a feeding in there. It helped that Garcia slept lightly enough that he sometimes heard her stirring before she was even awake, and could pluck her out of the right bedside sleeper and tuck her in beside Lucy; that minimized how much time any of them had to spend awake.

After Alice’s feeding that night, Lucy relaxed gratefully into a deeper sleep… only to wake to the sound of Elena crying.

“I’ve got her,” Garcia murmured from somewhere near the foot of the bed. “Go back to sleep.”

He shouldn’t have had to tell her twice. But…

“Is she hungry? I can take her.”

“I don’t think so.”

Elena didn’t usually fuss like this at night. Was this— was this pent up trauma? From the gunfight raging on the floor below—

The image of Elena’s birth parents tucking her into a _drawer_ for safety as Rittenhouse attacked hit hard, and she couldn’t stop the tears from welling up. For Elena. For Iris, whom Garcia had once upon a time held and rocked just like he was doing with Elena now. For Lorena, who’d deserved better, who’d _also_ died protecting her child. Just like Elena’s birth parents. Just like…

Lucy’s parents.

“Lucy?”

Elena was quieting down, and she herself was louder than she’d intended. “Sorry,” she said hastily, sniffling as she reached for the tissues on the nightstand.

“Lucy.” Garcia’s voice was exhausted and quiet and gently reproachful. “Anything you wanna talk about?” In the dim light from the street, she saw him bend over Elena’s sleeper.

“It’s nothing,” she said, and yawned. “It’s… it’s everything. Garcia, we can raise her, but we can’t— we can’t _fix_ what happened…”

She knew things always looked bleaker at three am then in daylight. But knowing that with her head didn’t change the ache in her heart from thinking about Elena’s birth parents.

“I know they were Rittenhouse,” she whispered. “I just…”

He climbed back into bed, and patted the sheets. She stretched out beside him, let him take her gently into his arms, and nestled happily against his chest.

“What she’s been through is awful,” he whispered. “But it’s not the last word, Lucy.”

She nodded, and slowly relaxed…

#

She woke even groggier than usual, like her brain was slogging through concrete. She forced herself to get up and start another day with two infants. She really wanted to make it to church this morning; it was something reassuringly familiar in the middle of being overwhelmed. And Garcia would be fine and happy with the girls for two hours, as long as she nursed them both before she went, but she was determined to take them with her.

The logistics alone… her old self would’ve been stressed nearly to tears by the time she managed to shower. But she wasn’t her old self, and never would be again. Wasn’t that the point?

Garcia had somehow dressed Alice _and_ made Lucy breakfast. She managed half of it while _he_ showered, and then frantically tried to stuff everything in the diaper bag. Car seats, car seats…

Garcia appeared, hair wet, and took Alice from her so she could get Elena into her clothes. Car seats. Diaper bag. Her own purse—

He didn’t put on dress slacks just to stay home with the girls. She stared at him for a second.

He saw the look on her face. “Do you, uh, mind?”

“Of— no, of course not, but— Garcia, you don’t even _like_ church.”

He touched his tongue to his lip. “It, ah, means something to you,” he said. “And it means something to you to take the girls. That’s enough for me.”

She blinked at him stupidly.

“Don’t worry,” he added. “We established at Alice’s christening that I won’t burst into flames by crossing the threshold, remember?”

She snorted, and managed to get Elena’s errant arm into her dress. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

He smiled a little. “Any time.”

One parent per child. That was easier to manage… the relative part of that comparison being key. They got the girls into the car and drove the short distance to the church. Before kids, Lucy had walked in nice weather. Maybe one day she could do that again.

They settled in the back pew. Garcia ignored the service in favor of the girls, which allowed Lucy to give it more of her attention. Most days, she didn’t even know for sure what she believed, but the familiar words, the rituals she remembered from childhood and then more recently with her grandfather… it felt like taking a moment to breathe.

When they sat down for the homily, she took Elena to cuddle. She happened to glance at Garcia a few minutes later and found a rather sardonic look on his face, but when he saw her watching, it softened into mere weariness. Both surface weariness, and something more… existential.

She knew once upon a time he had gone to Mass with Lorena and Iris. She guessed that the language of sin, forgiveness, absolution, inherent to a church service, might feel more or less like being poked with tiny needles. She almost wished he hadn’t come… but he’d offered, and she’d accepted.

She watched him for another moment as he looked down at Alice, with that expression of quiet, bedrock devotion that he so rarely showed in public. The lines on his face eased, and slowly, so did Lucy’s concern.

Elena very considerately let her sit through the first three minutes of the homily before she began to fuss. Lucy carried her out into the nave, and walked back and forth in the small space, gently bouncing her until she began to calm. She tried two times to carry her back inside, and each time Elena began to cry again. Finally Lucy gave up and sat on the steps to the storage closet, listening through the cracked-open sanctuary door. She didn’t even bother trying to figure out what it was about the sanctuary that Elena didn’t like today.

As Mother Robyn finished the homily, Garcia carried Alice out to her. “Oh my God, are you kidding?” Lucy said, undoing her shirt with one hand. How did this child eat so much and yet still say _so little?_ She’d just nursed—

No, it was Elena Lucy had nursed during the opening hymn. God. Having double the kids to keep track of was really messing with her head.

Garcia very gently lifted Elena out of her arms. They sat side-by-side on the lowest step as Alice nursed.

“God, I’m so tired,” Lucy muttered.

Garcia shifted Elena to his other side, and wrapped his arm around Lucy’s shoulders. She slumped against him.

A long-time member of the congregation— Louis? Lemuel? Lucy was way too tired to remember, for the life of her— exited the men’s room, looked their way, and glanced quickly away.

Lucy scowled. She was feeding her child. There was nothing scandalous about any of this.

Then she happened to glance up at Garcia, see the tail end of the hard look on his face, and put an entirely different construction on Louis-Lemuel’s averted gaze. “Don’t scare people with your face,” she murmured.

“This is my natural face, Lucy,” he said, a bit of a shit-eating grin hovering around the corners of my mouth. “I can’t do anything about it. I’m sorry it’s so, uh, hideous, but—”

“You know damn well my opinions about your face.”

He couldn’t hide his pleased little smirk.

The service moved into the passing of the peace, which meant more traffic to and from the bathrooms. Lucy leaned against Garcia’s shoulder, enjoying his comforting solidity. Doubling the number of infants in the house was no joke.

The sounds of the communion liturgy drifted out through the open door as Lucy switched Alice to the other side. She must’ve dozed off; the next thing she noticed was footsteps, and then Mother Robyn and the communion assistant were standing in front of her. Lucy felt touched the priest had noticed she was gone.

No wine for her, not now. But she held Alice with one arm and held out the other hand for the bread. She tried to eat it without getting the crumbs in Alice’s hair, and remembered, for a moment, giggling with Amy each Sunday about how the host had tasted that day.

She wasn’t sure what exactly this meant to her… but it wasn’t nothing.

Mother Robyn turned to Garcia. He shook his head once. But when she reached towards Elena, he nodded. Mother Robyn squatted on her heels, and Garcia held Elena up so Mother Robyn could rest her hand on Elena’s head and murmur a blessing. Then she did the same for Alice.

“Thank you,” Lucy whispered, and Mother Robyn gave her a warm smile.

“Mrs. Lewis left a meal for you in the hall refrigerator,” the priest told them, and then swept back into the sanctuary.

Lucy blinked. Mrs. Lewis? She hadn’t even thought Mrs. Lewis _liked_ her. An unmarried woman with two young children, and a man who made no secret of his non-participation…

But she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Finally, Alice started to slow down. Lucy let her finish, and then let Garcia take her so Lucy could rebutton her shirt. “Do you just want to go?” she whispered. The service would be over soon anyway, and there’d be a lot of people out there.

Garcia nodded once. She wouldn’t have to twist his arm.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Thank you. Again.”

He smiled down at her.

She held the girls while he retrieved the car seats, the diaper bag, and her purse from the back pew. He also brought a flowered reusable grocery bag from the fellowship hall. The bag held a large foil pan of lasagna, a plastic container of salad, a bag of dinner rolls, and a pan of brownies. Taped to the foil lid of the lasagna were baking directions in upright, spidery handwriting, and also a message: _I remember the early days very well._

Lucy smiled, touched.

They got the girls settled in the car, while Lucy marveled all over again at Alice’s ability to go from sleepy to full-on wiggle worm in 0.00001 seconds. Finally, she got all those little arms and legs— _were_ there just two of each? at this point, she wasn’t sure— in the right places, closed the door, and leaned against the car.

When even the littlest things felt like a battle, it was important to celebrate the small victories.

Garcia came around to the driver’s side. He smoothed her hair out of her face, and kissed the very corner of her mouth. Lucy felt some of the tension ease out of her, and again when he kissed her full on the mouth.

“Home?” she whispered after a long and well-spent moment.

“Home,” he agreed, his voice gravelly.


End file.
